Responsive material surfaces have been recently developed in several forms to provide a multitude of functions ranging from chemical sensors to adhesion modifying layers. Two primary routes have been used to achieve these stimuli-responsive surfaces: material phase-transition and environment-selectivity. Material phase transition tends to be a slow, non-sensitive, process with limited timing ability that can be used to change the shape of features on surfaces (e.g., shape memory alloys or shape memory polymers). From another perspective, depending upon a particular system, phase transition can lead to and present a change in chemical species on the material surface, thereby introducing an unwanted variable. Environment selectivity primarily relates to the conformation of polymers or small chain molecules fixed to or near a material surface. In these systems, a preferential solubility for a chemical group in the molecule in the surrounding environment will cause this chemical group to present itself at the surface. However, such techniques also present time-scale, sensitivity and related issues. As a result, the search for an alternate approach to stimuli-responsive surfaces remains an ongoing concern in the art.